Just as you thought it was safe to come out from behind the sofa...

Oh please, no. Not her again. Without even a blush or the grace to look ashamed, Cherie Blair popped up on coast-to-coast American television this week to plug her crummy autobiography, Speaking For Myself.

She wore something awful, of course; the kind of floaty white blouse that only a Las Vegas nun on a budget could love. Under the transparent sleeves, Cherie's pink arms gleamed unhappily.

Yes, the Cruella de Vil lips were curved into the usual twitching smirk. Yet Mrs Blair did not seem quite as brash and confident as usual.

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Who the dixie? Americans struggled to recognise Cherie Blair

Certainly, she did not look bored or eat noisily throughout the interview, as she did on a recent UK interview for a small Bangladeshi television station.

How rude. And how typical of her. However, for primetime USA, Mrs Blair was on her best behaviour.

'It's a thrill to be here!' she gurgled to chat show host Jay Leno. 'There's nothing phony about Tony,' she cried, as five million Americans scrabbled for the off switch and asked each other: who the dixie is she?

You know, it is something we still wonder about over here.

For 11 long years while her husband was prime minister, Mrs Blair tormented the British public with her hard-boiled hypocrisy, her flaky friends and her infamously freeloading ways.

An Italian palazzo? A beach-side Bee Gee mansion in Florida? If it was five-star luxurious and totally free, the Blairs would be there like greased grease; Tony out tanning his man-boobs by the pool before Cherie had even had time to unpack her discount Liz Hurley kaftans.

What an embarrassing pair! Yet if there were aspects of the Blairs in Downing Street that were hard to stomach, it is nothing compared to the Blairs unleashed. Now we are faced with a couple of chancers on the make, two knaves no longer constrained by modesty or the restricting chains of office.

As they both waltz around America as if they had not a care in the world, the economy back home is tanking, thousands are losing their jobs and the economic future looks bleak. Much of the blame for this can be pinned on to Blair's chest, right next to his shiny new American gong. Does he care? It seems unlikely.

In the East Room of the White House on Tuesday, George Bush awarded a smirking Tony Blair the Presidential Medal of Freedom, America's highest civilian honour. Bush went on to praise Blair as the 'sort of guy who looks you in the eye and tells the truth'.

Well, that's certainly sexed-up news to most of us. No wonder the former prime minister just nodded and said nothing.

Yet while Blair could not have looked more oily or pleased with himself in Washington, it was his wife's performance on the Tonight Show that was the most blood-curdling.

Rehashing favourite anecdotes from Speaking For Myself, her Downing Street autobiography first published in the UK last year, Mrs Blair talked of how Tony proposed while she was cleaning the toilet. 'A beautiful story,' mocked Leno.

She also went over the saga of how her son Leo was conceived in Balmoral Castle because she was too embarrassed to pack her 'contraceptive equipment'. Gah.

Speaking of protection, I must ask once more if we don't all have a right to be protected from yuksome, private Blair revelations like this?

Nine years ago, there was no law of privacy in this country. That changed when the Blair government incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights, which includes a right to privacy, into our law system.

Remember it? Mrs Blair certainly does. She would cite it at every politically advantageous opportunity to protect her own privacy and that of her family.

However, now that she and hubby are out in the free market, her understanding of what a private life is has become shrill and mutable. Now she has invaded her own privacy for financial gain on both sides of the Atlantic.

As Britain goes back to the future into a time of grim austerity, the Blairs gambol on the sunlit uplands, reaping the benefits of high office. Even the value of their house in Bayswater has gone up, bucking the national trend. Now that really is annoying.

Not that the Blairs care what the legacy they left or the future we face holds for us. Like a farmer with a ten-teat cow, Tony and Cherie are out to milk the situation for all its worth. This week they are overrated, overpaid and, thankfully, over there.

I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to America with all my heart for their behaviour. The Blairs? They make the Boston Tea Party raiders look classy.

Bonkers: There's no one quite like Harriet Harman

Harriet's mad plan is in a class of its own

Poor people - they are such a pain in the neck, aren't they? Over the past 11 years, despite a deluge of social security handouts to cushion the blow of social injustice, they still won't do what Harriet Harman wants them to.

Ingrates! Let's send them all back to the boot-blacking factory without any gruel as a punishment.

Perhaps it has only served to do the opposite; to neutralise ambition and make it a rather comfy nest for these luckless cuckoos?

Yet Harman is still not happy. In her utterly doolally determination to legislate Britain into a socialist utopia where all are equal - equally miserable, of course - her new social mobility White Paper has laws making it a duty for the public sector to narrow the gap between the rich and the poor.

Backgrounds will be taken into account. Who your parents are will matter, but in a different way than before. Those born lucky, says Harriet, will now discover that their fortunes are suddenly dimmed.

Harman and her Equalities Commission are exercised that the gap between rich and poor in this country is greater than ever, but that is what a decade of socialism has done.

Only she would dare to pass a law to reduce economic inequality. It is so misguided, it's almost laughable. This won't eradicate the class divide. It will make society more riven with class than ever before.

In practical terms, it is a hazy encouragement for government bodies to focus a bit more on the poor. It will provide a scanty camouflage for more attempts to engineer desirous social outcomes rather than pursue fairness and equal treatment.

Will teachers be obliged to give dumb, poor kids better marks than dumb kids from marginally better backgrounds? Apparently, this is exactly what Harriet wants.

Will judges ignore the compelling testimony of an educated, honest, brave citizen mugged by a pair of louts, so as to give the savage but impoverished louts in the dock a better chance of justice?

That is what Harriet gets. Class isn't a big problem in this country any more. What is a problem is a Government who obsess over class instead of improving education and encouraging motivation.

Separated at birth: Posh in her new Armani ad and Dino the Dinosaur from The Flintstones?

Has Posh gone back to the Stone Age?

No wonder Land of Leather has gone bust. Its latest ad campaign is complete rubbish.

Look at Posh, all collapsed on the floor, with her head lolling on one of their sofas. She looks about as comfortable as a worm on a pin cushion and as for - what?

Whoops! Apologies. Apparently Posh is not advertising for Land of Leather - or Topps Tiles new line of Venetian blinds.

Our girl is here in the near nip, plugging Emporio Armani's new range of women's underwear. Whee-he! It is, of course, a sister campaign to the startling Armani one fronted by her husband, David, a few years back.

Remember? The one where he had a football hidden in his pants just to show how clever he was with the ball?

Actually, these are quite nice pictures. Very film noir, even if Posh does look like she's just about to get arrested. (When doesn't she, come to think of it?)

Did someone mention retouching? Too right. The last time I saw a neck as elongated as this, it was on a Canada goose.

Hang on. With this curious neck and those cute tufts of hair, who does Victoria Beckham look like? It's Dino The Dinosaur from The Flintstones, of course. Separated at birth?

Dislike: Barack Obama's sugar-sweet ode to his daughters turns me off

Here comes the Disney president

I want to like Barack Obama more than I actually do. His lame pronouncements on the war in Gaza are insulting to the people there who suffer.

Mumbling some guff about being uncomfortable if his daughters had to sleep in the Gaza Strip is just not good enough for the putative leader of the Free World.

Now, on the eve of his inauguration, Obama is about to publish an emotional, 800-word, 'personal' letter to his daughters in an American magazine.

The whole thing will be released on Sunday, but the excepts are worryingly syrupy.

'When I was a young man, I thought life was all about me - about how I'd make my way in the world, become successful, and get the things I want.

'But then the two of you came into my world, with all your curiosity and mischief and those smiles that never fail to fill my heart and light up my day.

'Suddenly, all my big plans for myself didn't seem so important any more. I soon found that the greatest joy in my life was the joy I saw in yours.'

Oh dear. Would you like some more sugar with your schmaltz, honey? Barack's motives may be sincere, but his delivery is still a little too Disney for comfort.

Trial by TV would be sweet justice

In some legal circles, the new Director of Public Prosecutions, Keir Starmer, has a reputation as a man who tiptoes on the worrying side of liberal.

'He's so Left-wing and right on,' one lawyer complained, 'that he wants to make obstructing a terrorist bomb a crime.' Ouch. Obviously a bad-taste exaggeration. We hope.

Still, it is no surprise that Starmer is in favour of opening up the courts and televising criminal trials. Interesting. The more that justice is seen to be done the better, but who will pick the trials to be televised?

Whatever happens, no doubt it will be enormously popular daytime viewing. In America, the show Judge Judy has just overtaken Oprah Winfrey's viewing figures for the first time.

The reality-based court show, featuring former family court judge, Judith Sheindlin, arbitrates over small-claims cases and is watched by ten million people every day. It is oddly gripping, even if Judy is far too sensible ever to get on the bench in a British court.

Primetime crime? Bring it on. Who wouldn't love to keep a beady eye on some of our barmier judges?